Page 68 of The Love Interest
We don’t say anything for a couple of minutes. He turns on the stereo, and Sinatra is singing “The Way You Look Tonight.”He glances up into the rearview mirror at me. “That’s the radio, by the way.”
“Not like I expected you to listen to that song and longingly think of me,” is what I say. Butoh my God oh my God oh my God, Universe! What are you trying to tell us?!
The car slows, and he signals, turning onto a driveway. The driveway of a colonial-style house. Two stories, with a newer addition built onto one side. There’s a gate and a charming garden out front. “Why are you stopping here?”
“This is my cabin.” He parks the car.
“This is a house. This is the size of my parents’ house.”
“I call it my cabin.”
“Oh. I was expecting something a little more rustic.”
“As always, sorry to disappoint you.”
He gets out to open the front door of the house, and I see him turning off the security system, turning on some lights. I get out, slip my backpack on, and get Goliath out of the front seat.
He comes back out to retrieve things from the trunk. “Go on in,” he says. “Make yourself at home.”
“I’ll help you carry stuff inside.”
“I got it. Go on in.”
I carry Goliath through the front door.
Holy shit.
Beautiful oak hardwood floors. Open design plan. Vaulted ceilings with skylights and exposed beams. This colonial has been remodeled on the inside, and it’s wonderful.
Emmett drops a big duffel bag and leather messenger bag inside the front door and then goes back out again.
I place Goliath on the floor in the living room and wander around. Tasteful furniture. Not fancy, but it’s all comfortable and modern. I don’t see any bookshelves, but there are stacks of books everywhere. Some of the books are children’s books. It smells like incense, which is very unexpected. There are so many sliding glass doors to a big patio out back. This place must be so pretty during the day with the light streaming in.
He comes back inside, shuts the front door. Brings the bags of groceries to the huge open kitchen and unloads some things into the fridge, including beer. He places a bottle of wine and a bottle of bourbon on the counter and then removes his coat and goes back to the front entrance to hang it up on a coat rack.
This is the cleanest house I have ever been in. And so well furnished. “Does someone else live here?”
He walks right over to me. “Nope.”
I take a step back when he reaches out to me. He gives me a look, likeCome on. Get over yourself.“I’ll hang up your coat,” he offers calmly.
“Oh.” I let my backpack slip from my shoulders. He takes the backpack and then helps me off with my big, wet, puffy coat. The tips of his fingers graze my shoulders—over my Henley shirt—and it makes me shiver.
“Guess I should turn up the heat,” he muses.
“Yeah, it’s pretty chilly.” It’s totally not cold in this house, butheneeds to get over himself too.
He subtly glances down at my two telltale physical signs of being chilly and nods. “I’ll turn up the heat, then.” He takes my backpack over to the foot of the stairs and hangs up my coat on the coat rack. Then he adjusts the thermostat a tiny bit, just to play out this little ruse. “I let family and friends use this place sometimes,” he finally explains. “But I come up here more in the summer and fall. Usually. Not this year. My neighbor’s cleaning lady takes care of it all year round.”
I can’t stop watching him as he walks around. I’ve never seen him in private, in his own place before. The way he moves with ease, it makes him even more attractive. It makes my internal screaming even louder. He comes back over near where I’m standing and casually flips a switch to turn on some porch lights. I have a look through the glass doors at the back of the house. There’s a deck and grass and trees, so many trees. “Is that a pool?”
“Yeah. Plunge pool.”
“Baller.” I have literally never said the wordballerout loud before in my life, but it’s the only thing I could think to say, other than the thing that I have been thinking, which is,Holy shit I want to live here.
“It’s not heated though. And this isn’t waterfront property. More private, that way.”
“Sure.”
